Big Search Firms To Chat About Click Fraud; Will It Do Any Good?

from the will-it-have-any-impact? dept

Wed, Aug 2nd 2006 1:28am — Mike Masnick

Search Engines WEB writes in to note that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com and Looksmart have apparently teamed up to do something about clickfraud. Actually, that's the story that they want everyone to cover. There has been plenty of news coverage recently (and the occasional lawsuit) suggesting that clickfraud is a really big problem for the search engines -- an allegation that the companies deny. However, that storyline has received enough press coverage that it became clear that these firms need to at least make it look like they're doing something about the issue. That's why Google has suddenly been opening up a bit about the issue. However, it's unclear from the description in this article if this "alliance" is really going to matter. It has all the hallmarks of a group that never actually does anything that matters. There's a big press flurry announcing it, but the only real task of the group is to "find a better way to identify and measure 'click fraud'." Not only that, but they admit any guidelines may not be forthcoming for at least a year... basically giving the group plenty of room to be forgotten about when the results aren't all that interesting. Hopefully, something useful comes out of this, but a big press release about these competitors working together, while perhaps a first step, is still a long, long way from an actual plan to fight clickfraud.

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10 Comments

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Steve-Oh, 2 Aug 2006 @ 2:01am

Lawyers = Sharks
I like how the class-action suit against Google yields so little for advertisers in the way of rebates, but the lawyers pocket $30 mil of the total $60 mil suit. Ugh. So many lawyers, so few places to hide the bodies. ;-)
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- Mark, 2 Aug 2006 @ 5:51am
  
  Re: Lawyers = Sharks
  Perhaps they spent the most on their adwords :)
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2006 @ 5:51am

What is 'click fraud' ? I'm not quite sure I understand this.
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- Banditofnovernetold, 2 Aug 2006 @ 6:06am
  
  Re: What is 'click fraud' ?
  click fraud is when a person or a bot clicks on a add on a site, Say you run a site with google ads (ads by google) you get paid each time its clicked on a certain amount of $. So you click that add 500 times per day you just made $$
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robert, 2 Aug 2006 @ 8:00am

click fraud
what is it?
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robert, 2 Aug 2006 @ 8:01am

click fraud
what is it? What do you mean by click fraud?
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Ryan, 2 Aug 2006 @ 8:32am

It depends who you ask.. Google defines click fraud as a click only for an advertiser to generate money for himself, or by a bot, or by a competitor trying to increase your spending

Marketers howerver, have been known to chalk up every click that doesn't result in a sale or inquiry as click fraud.
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Whatever he said, 2 Aug 2006 @ 9:37am

That makes sense. I used to sell mobile computing stuff and would litter bulliten boards with fake customers praising me, and it drove up my sales considerably. That was 5 years ago, I'm sure most folk are wise to that kind of ploy today.

I've considered paying google for a sponsored ad, but we have a lot of competition and what is to stop them from clicking on my add all day just to drive up my bill -- no thanks.
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Stu, 2 Aug 2006 @ 1:20pm

Will it stop click fraud
No way to stop click fraud. Pay per click is the problem.

Move to a pay per sale (commission) system, and fraud isn't eliminated but can be controlled. It's been done successfully in the adult industry for years.

Would Google/Yahoo want to switch? Nope pay-per-click is the goose that layed the golden egg.

The advertisers will have to demand it - but won't be able to organize enough demand for the search engines to offer it.
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CPCcurmudgeon, 27 Mar 2007 @ 12:45pm

It looks like advertisers' demands are being met, because Google is ramping up on CPA (cost per action) advertising. The question still remains (in my mind, at least), why did it take them so long to realize that CPC made it trivial to commit click fraud?
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